Invariance of Light

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21 years 3 months ago #6472 by Jan
Replied by Jan on topic Reply from Jan Vink
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[TVF]: No. One signal would be traveling upstream against an aether, and the other would be traveling downstream. Defining the delays as equal is equivalent to assuming that the speed of light is the same in both directions.
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What if we say that space is homogenous? Moreover, the SOL should be the same in all directions, otherwise we contradict that it is an universal constant.

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21 years 3 months ago #6237 by tvanflandern
<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>[Jan[: What if we say that space is homogenous? Moreover, the SOL should be the same in all directions, otherwise we contradict that it is an universal constant.<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

That is the speed-of-light postulate, the one that you complained about in your previous message. -|Tom|-

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21 years 3 months ago #6066 by hal
Replied by hal on topic Reply from
Jan, this is frustrating, but only in SR context - other theories have no such limitations.
In SR, simply, the word "absolute" is striped of all meaning - there is no "absolute" speed, "absolute" time and so on - because of the first postulate. The only thing for sure is that c is allways c - because of the second postulate.
It is said, then, that SR is the most simple and "elegant" (whatever this means) among others, therefore the prefered one.

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21 years 3 months ago #6370 by Larry Burford
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[Jan]
Why did we accept the second postulate in the first place?
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Because we couldn't detect an aether wind. Which implied no absolute frame of reference. The notion of a prefered - but still not absolute - frame of reference is fairly new, IIRC. At the time SR seemed the only way out. Now it permeates so much of science that it is hard to get trained technical people to even consider thinking about alternatives. But hard is not the same as impossible. I hope.

There is a debate going on right now on sci.astro about whether or not a theory has to be testable in order to be scientific. Like most of these debates it has begun to wander off-topic, so I haven't been following it closely of late. But to me the answer is obvious.

Of course, you do have to say what you mean by "testable". Like Nixon and pornography, we may have trouble defining it but we know it when we see it.

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[tvf]
One signal would be traveling upstream against an aether, and the other would be traveling downstream.
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Right. But I thought the aether (in MM, alias the elysium or the gravitational potential field) was supposed to be locally entrained and therefore stationary relative to massive objects. This is why we don't detect an aether wind with an MMX. Which, now that I think about it, is the functional equivalent of a one-clock SOL experiment. (?)

No aether wind, no upstream/downstream effects. And my one-clock-two-detector rig is back in business.

??

Regards,
LB



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21 years 3 months ago #6371 by Larry Burford
<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>
It is said, then, that SR is the most simple and "elegant" (whatever this means) among others, therefore the prefered one.
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Might this be an example where Occam's Razor fails?

Regards,
LB

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21 years 3 months ago #6238 by tvanflandern
<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>[LB]: I thought the aether (in MM, alias the elysium or the gravitational potential field) was supposed to be locally entrained and therefore stationary relative to massive objects. This is why we don't detect an aether wind with an MMX. Which, now that I think about it, is the functional equivalent of a one-clock SOL experiment. (?)<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

Right. But that is LR, which has no such postulare as SR about the invariance of c. We were speaking of how to test the speed of light without making an assumption (such as entrainment) that implies the answer. Such an experiment cannot be done using light signals or anything slower. It can be done in principle using gravity signals because they are FTL in forward time, which contradicts SR right from the start. -|Tom|-

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